Cinema: The New Pictures: Feb. 17, 1936

Modern Times (Charles Chaplin) is the first picture made by its star
since City Lights (1931) and his third in seven years. In it, Chaplin
sings one song but does not speak. The other actors are heard only when
the action permits their voices to be mechanized through phonographs,
television sets, radios. A musical score, written by Chaplin,
accompanies the film.

City Lights was produced when talkies were both so novel and so bad
that silence helped rather than hindered the picture. No such advantage
aided Chaplin with Modern Times. Even in 1936, however,...